I believe that something has been overlooked in the idea of "royalty based
standards".
They way I see it, is that a standard is that which the parties involved can
agree on. Once a standard is put together the parties can go their separate
ways again and use the standard. In this case it would be developers using
the standard in their programs. The programs they can then sell (or give
away) as they see fit.
But the standard comes first. It /should/ come /before/ any talk of royalty.
It should come /before/ any talk of competition. The standard is used to make
it easy for developers to make programs and to make it easy for users to
choose programs. Therefore the standard will help all. They way I see it,
once a standard becomes royalty based two thing will happen:
1: One (or several) parallel standard(s) will form (we have seen this before
a few times). A standard which does just about the same as the original but
which require no royalty
2: The royalty based standard will be pirated.
The first thing will mean that the standard is useless. The idea was that
different developers could write software that was interchangeable but since
there are now several standards for the same thing, this idea is now pretty
much down the drain.
The second thing thing will mean that only a few (my guess will be large
companies) will actually paid the patent holder. This might lead the patent
holder to set up the price next time around.
The end result is that everybody looses (well, save maybe the large companies
that DO consider this idea to be a Good Thing).
The free and independent developers won't be able to be just that (free and
independent). That is, if they still want to use the original standard). The
rest of them (those who will not use the original standard) will have to
reinvent the standard.
The users will have several standards which are similar in design but which
are incompatible. This will mean that it will be next to impossible to use
the Web. This (of course) especially goes for the users that run on
non-commercial Operating Systems and use non-commercial applications.
The patent holder might make a few bugs. But seeing as he is properly
employed at one of the large companies, that company will just get the money
back they had to pay up on one of the other standards.
In the proposal it says "Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory". What has to be
kept in mind is that for some developers these words simply do /not/ go
together with royalty. For these developers, the fact that is royalty based
means that they have not the means to choose this option. No matter how RAND
it is.
--
Peter H.
Don't get even -- get odd!